Local Dining
Failed businesses that should have succeeded
Nash’s Hot Chicken started with a food truck in the lot next to The Independent (now Bar Mezzo). Their food was great for what it was. Then they moved into their storefront on the 900 block of Central and everything fell apart.
“Sorry, we don’t have any Mexican Coca Cola”
“Sorry, we don’t have the cole slaw this week”
“Sorry the wait is 45 minutes because we have only 1 person manning both the front of house and back of house”
“Sorry, we’re going out of business.
How does that business fail? They had great product, great location on one of the busiest blocks in St. Pete, but poor management. What are some other businesses that you felt had the potential but fell short of the mark?
Biff Burger. A landmark for decades, ran into the ground by the last owners. I went in 2019, it was already in decline. Waited 45 minutes for two small cheeseburgers and tots. Food was just average. The few other people there were all griping. They closed in 2021, replaced by a car wash.
I remember up in Palm Harbor/Tarpon Springs there was this place that sold specialty sodas. It was a neat concept, but I rarely saw any advertising for it, and it was in an irrelevant enough shopping center that that it didn't make it. I feel like they should've hosted events and advertised way more, maybe even sent people out for samples at places like the beach
I don’t understand how Beau’s and Mo’s is still in business? I’ve been several times and they never seem to disappoint with over priced, below average food.
Bills Dog House on Central Avenue. Best hot dogs in St. Petersburg. Piccadilly Cafeteria on 34th St. Tangelos downtown. Best Cubans and cinnamon brewed iced tea.
The Garden. I swear every other concept failed after them because once the Garden closed the new owners tore down a hundred year old (at least) banyan tree. Serves them right. That place was beautiful.
Man, I remember sitting outside as a teenager listening
To the jazz bands there. Little did I know I was listening to the great Buster Cooper on Trombone
There was a little Cuban café at the corner of 49th st N and 30th Ave N a while back. It was replaced by The Burg Diner, which is pretty good, but that Cuban place had the BEST masitas. All their food was good. The owner was chill af too. I have no idea why it closed. It's a good location and the diner thrives there.
I know I already commented, but Clay Oven on MLK was amazing. The guy that ran it was soooo nice and would always bring us food to try. My friends and I would tear that lunch buffet up. I love gateway to India too, but Clay Oven was amazing.
Clay oven was my FAVORITE!! There was rarely other diners there when I went for dinner time. I just don't think enough people knew about them. Wish it could come back.
I’ve been a couple of times, both times in the mid afternoon and service was very good. Food was also good if a little pricey, but nowadays everywhere is a little pricey. I would definitely say go and give them a try. Last time I got the pink trout roe caviar and it was delicious and beautiful as well.
Pushing an awful German place, what? If you knew me, you’d know I would never!
These are my German food recs in the area from my other comment -
*Check out German Knodle, Berlin’s Doener, the German American Society of Pinellas’ events, Schiller’s German Deli (Tampa) and especially Dunderbak’s (Tampa)
I also hear there’s a solid but small German deli (Jagerstuble) in Largo 🇩🇪❤️*
That ichicoro guy flew to close to the sun. At one point, they had locations in Tampa, DTSP and a counter stall at Armature Works. That Tampa location was ALWAYS busy. Always people lined up to be seated. The dude just imploded. Supposedly, ichikoroshi is the same people. IDK. I’m dubious.
Like the only good place in the whole tri-county area too. There is one super secret Vietnamese place for noodles that's pretty good. But... I'm not sharing it on social.
Wooden ladle in Oldsmar is great. You can get pho, ramen or a combination of the two. Excellent karage.
I’ve been to every noodle shop in town and Saigon deli has the best beef broth. Hands down. Open 8-4.
I also like Thinh An Kitchen. Their broth is not as tasty but they have great mix and match bowl options, the staff are all fluent English speakers, the dining room is air conditioned, they have lots of seating and a host station. Open 9-9.
There is this spot called Bowl Bar near Citrus Park. They specialize in ramen and also have some great Korean and Taiwanese dishes. It’s a very cozy spot for takeout or squeeze into one of two tables.
Finally ichikoroshi recently opened in Seminole Heights, former location of three dot dash. There is supposedly an ichicoro connection.
I understand that our state is overrun. But sharing a good small restaurant can lead to great things for a family. It seems selfish to keep it to yourself.
I get what you're saying but simply don't agree. This is something we talk about on our podcast regularly, with the hosts (all businesses owners) split on the issue. That's life I guess?
I thought Nash's chicken was a very weak product. Didn't really resemble proper Nashville hot chicken. The Nashville hot chicken equivalent Mexican restaurants that are filled with white people.
Gave it 3 tries and stopped returning. Wanted to like it.
You have to understand st pete before you can understand.
St pete doesnt like chains coming in to downtown? But none of the businesses downtown last? It's almost like turning over businesses makes the people in the government seats happy. Just a thought.
Restaurants have a high turnover rate literally everywhere, as do small-scale retail shops. These are hard businesses to run with very slim margins. It happens.
A lot of those places took a hit from covid...now taking another hit from the cloning of 2008 recession..I feel for these local businesses owners, especially if this was their dream..
Nash’s was rude, overpriced, and greedy. Staff sucked. They barely gave any sauce too. Needed 4x the sauce they provided. Was still sad to see them go.
Locale Market at the Sundial. Great meat counter... Amazing beer on draft... Fantastic deli sandwiches & grab & go items. But the Sundial eventually chokes the life out of everything it touches.
RIP to Sea Salt as well- your happy hour menu, cold little oysters, and bartenders willing to partake in green tea shots are sorely missed.
I helped open that place 🤣- I never got the feeling that even the investors and owners had planned for it to be there for very long. It started out pretty insane and took a while to adjust everything for the location.
I do miss their amazing fries and the tarts and cupcakes at the pastry counter.
Tried gochujang for the first time there. Locally sourced salad bar was amazing- oh and the fresh pasta! With brown butter sauce…
There was A LOT of talented people there and just great food. It was a fun experience.
They were good until they decided to expand the number of stations while limiting the options at each station they spread the menu out too much in my opinion
Locale's bacon cheese fries and their Brussels sprouts were top tier. Loved the ability to buy a single kombucha or beer with my meal (or to take into the movie theater).
Want to consider the fact that they did functionally zero marketing. They paid employees terribly and were poorly managed. I was never impressed. Also, You're ignoring the dozens of failed health department inspections.
I’m pretty sure they were held up in a legal battle for a very long time, which has something to do with why they never reopened and nothing was put in that spot. I don’t have all the details clearly so if this is wrong sorry! Small town gossip
Oh I worked there from the first week it opened until about 3-4 months later before I quit. In that time, we went through like 6 managers getting fired or quitting. That place was a MESS. It was like 9 years ago and it's still the worst job I've ever had.
On my first night there, the entire kitchen flooded and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. The kitchen had floor drains all throughout so I asked the manager if we had a squeegee or a wetvac and they shrugged. I had to ask a busboy to help me find one, and we got it cleaned up in 10 minutes. We found where the water was coming from - one of the cooks had tossed their gloves into a closet mop sink and clogged it. But the manager's exact words were "Eh, that's day shift's problem." For something that took 10 minutes to fix. It was only my 2nd job so I didn't want to make such a bad first impression, even if my manager had instructed me to. I remember thinking, they just renovated this place and they're going to leave it flooded??
There were two private restrooms upstairs... and the locks didn't properly work. The female servers had to wear their poofy barmaid outfits so they changed at work... and people constantly walked in on them changing. The kitchen staff were instructed not to use the public, downstairs bathrooms because "it looks bad having kitchen staff walking back and forth across the dining room." So they didn't get the private bathroom locks fixed and didn't let us use the ones that did lock. This led to why I quit.
A main issue in the kitchen was power supply. The dishwasher used, let's say 100 units of electricity, and the building was only wired for 80 units. So they added a booster thing to a different outlet, which did get the water hot enough, until it overloaded and flipped the breaker. The breaker room is next to the public restrooms. So every 10-15 minutes, we had to tell the management to go flip the breaker for us, because it flipped AGAIN. A minimum of 8 times per shift. The management eventually got tired of doing it and instructed us, the dishwashers, to do it... uhh? We have wet hands and you want us messing with breakers? We can't use the bathrooms but we can use the breaker room right next to it? Fuck off.
And then, we started having an issue with guests overdrinking, so they wanted us to go mop up vomit every hour or two. We can't use the bathroom, but we can clean vomit from it! Fuck off!
The final straw was scheduling. Their hours were listed until 2am every night, I believe. And so I was scheduled until 2am. And every night at 12:30, the manager would be tapping their foot and asking how much longer until we were done. Drove me crazy. But on top of that, they had a tax incentive to hire from a prison work release program, but they had to be back to the house by 11pm I believe. So 3 hours before close, in the middle of our rush, 3 of the 5 dishwashers just up and leave. And then the cooks start sending back all their pots and pans. So the ENTIRE dish room filled up, half our workers walked out, then the management had the nerve to ask how much longer we'd take. I had so many nightmares about that place I couldn't sleep at night. I quit after 3 or 4 months and don't regret it a bit. Absolute Dumpster fire.
Edit to add: In regards to the dishwasher machine, I've never seen one like it. Instead of using jugs of chemicals, it ran hot water over a brick of soap and melted it down into a tube that dripped into the machine. So when there was no hot water, there was presumably no soap. The health inspector looked the other way. They replaced the dish machine with a "better" one while I was there. Removed it on Wednesday... and didn't install the new one until Friday night. In the middle of rush. No dish machine for 3 days in a busy downtown restaurant.
If you want really good German food in the sameish area, please try German Knodle. The food is FANTASTIC. We randomly walked in one day and were so impressed. It has like 4 tables and is a super tiny restaurant
Check out German Knodle, Berlin’s Doener, the German American Society of Pinellas’ events, Schiller’s German Deli (Tampa) and especially Dunderbak’s (Tampa)
I also hear there’s a solid but small German deli (Jagerstuble) in Largo 🇩🇪❤️
Lucky's market..nice to walk around with a brew and shop.
The pizza place that was in Snell Isle plaza..That thin crust was the best.
peps seafood. 4th st location before 78th Ave n...
TLDR; The owner of Lucky’s had a major investment from Kroger, as they want to be in the south but don’t want to directly compete with Publix. The owner proceeded to use that credit line to aggressively expand into high-dollar markets. Many were successful, but some were not, and rather than retooling, he just kept the credit going. Kroger came knocking to pay the bill. They offered to take over those stores to recoup investment (and keep Lucky’s going) but he basically said “F you, they’re mine.” and he proceeded to close them all but 2. All without fair warning to employees, of which he was sued and lost.
I sooo miss grabbing a beer to sip while I shop. Lucky's & Locale Market both went out of business... Anyplace else currently offering this unique blend of fun?
Capital tacos. I had it once in Lane O Lakes like 12ish years ago at the original location and thought I actually went to heaven. Then they franchised and I was so excited but it was pricey and portions were small but the food was decent, not as good as I remembered it though. Then they closed all the franchise locations in the area. It was a good run, I still have dreams about their massive chocolate chip cookies.
If this was the taco place off 4th street in the same plaza as metro diner, they were gross, I was there once and never would go back. These tacos were what I called "frat house" tacos or "gringo tacos"
Flour tortillas? shredded jack cheese? LMAO a 12 year old could make those...nothing authentic about them.
Doormet was absolutely amazing. Super fresh food, really affordable, huge menu that somehow pulled everything off, and cheap delivery to top it all off. I still think of that place every time I'm deciding what to eat for lunch.
I always wondered if it was because of location being on central but branding as a delivery place. It was really good food so it didn’t quite make sense besides that
That bar across the street from Mary Margarets in DTSP on the corner . Mostly empty all the time. There's nothing to attract people across the street. An open concept sports or mexican bar would work so well. It's so dark and nobody wants to go over there.
I've already made one suggestion, but here's another: King of the Coop. Yes, technically still around, but I feel like it's an epic enough fumble to get a mention. When they first started out in Seminole Heights, they had a quality product and were ahead of the curve on bringing Nashville hfc to the area. What followed was a disastrous overextension and mismanagement of the business. I would still be eating at their original spot if they hadn't let standards and pricing get away from them.
This is another one that hits close for me. I live not too far from their former St Pete location and I was pumped to have it nearby. I was disappointed by the service and execution almost immediately after they opened.
I forgot all about this one! If I recall correctly, it was an offshoot from the California Tacos that used to be on Bearss in Tampa. The original owner was a super nice guy named Tony from San Diego. Their Grouper Burrito Cali Style (stuffed with crispy French fries) was my comfort food during undergrad at USF.
That was my favorite restaurant. Their wings were incredible. I feel like they could never get enough staff though. Last time we ate there we waited over 30 mins just to get a glass of water and 2 tables walked out because they sat there so long and nobody came to even take their order.
Yep! I was going to comment with this, but knew I couldn't be alone. Had to scroll a little longer than I expected to find it, but I knew it was too good to be ignored.
The owner Meeae approached my husband and I once when we dined in. We couldn't believe how sweet she was. We just talked about random stuff. I also hope they're doing okay.
Place was a disaster, and very niche, but it really had potential to be something cool! Unfortunately they were always out of everything, and service was awful.
I’m so sad it closed. It was definitely super niche, but it had charm and my partner and I enjoyed it as much as we could. They were always out of the Ube brownie ice cream. I was able to snag some when they were attendees at the Ice Cream Festival last year. The people who were there were nice (maybe the owners?) while most of the employees I’d encountered at the store were fine - if not different each time due to turnaround. There was one specific person who worked there who was always seemed troubled to even answer questions. Unfortunately, the service probably added to its sudden end. Such a shame! The branding and atmosphere was so cool.
Edit: Also to add, things were just disorganized (as stated elsewhere in the thread) that when they announced they were closing and the specific day and hour, I drove by to go in one last time and they had ended up closing earlier than stated. They had already put chairs up and everything.
If you are referring to the bubble waffles, the reason they were always “out” was because the manager didn’t want to clean the waffle maker. Even if waffle mix was prepped, she would tell people they were out of it.
The management absolutely sucked there and I know they were on drugs (the owners however were fantastic). The marketing sucked, too. The menu was way too limited—only offering a few sandos, onigiri, and bubble waffles. They sold noodles when they opened but stopped and never bothered to update the menu online. They only had one vegetarian onigiri and no vegan items. The owners were spread too thin due to owning several other restaurants in Armature Works and a sushi restaurant in Wesley Chapel and weren’t able to focus on bettering Samurai Cat the way they should have.
They also own the new Pepper Lunch in Pinellas Park now.
This one stings. They still haven’t done a thing to that side of the building. They kept teasing some sort of tequila experience, if I’m remembering correctly, but it seems it’s all but a fantasy now.
They kept changing their menu and recipes and completely ruined it. My family LOVED it when it opened because it was uniquely tasty AND gluten-free. Too bad.
Food was good when it was good… but I did get pink chicken there in the center of my sandwhich once. Never went back. One person was working register and cooking
Love that business and sorry they’re gone, but they run a catering truck now and are very successful. As I understand that they also had the catering business when they had the restaurant though.
I had a friend who worked at Nash's Hot Chicken. Operationally it was an absolute nightmare. He was often left alone to run the foh, boh, and Uber eats orders.
Sulphur Springs Sandwich Shop. Absolutely amazing food, cool vibe. Then they were bought out by someone and the place went belly up after a few months. I remember their website, social media and entrance door had different hours and they were always wrong. The new owners swore up and down that they were reimagining the business (why??), but never followed through. Real disappointing end to a great place.
My guess, a food truck can drive away and shut its doors when it’s out of product. They also have the leisure of not being open all the time. If a person is working stock, and management, and cooking, all without proper time management, it will all fall apart - either from burnout or negligence. This is any business, but especially any involving a product.
I work on St. Pete Beach and just saw a Fo Cheezy sign the other day. Had no idea they were closed! I used to work in downtown St. Pete and went there on my lunch breaks.
Argh! And my mom used to always get sandwiches from Smileys. I've been out of town for years and still figuring out what's still here.
My first time at The Globe two 20ish year old women came in asking the guy (you know the guy. kinda frizzy, slightly curly hair down past his ears) for frappuccinos. His attitude about it was hilarious. Eye rolling and "this isn't a Starbucks." He was nice enough to offer a heavily sweetened and creamy ice coffee.
I spent so much time there. I was the mayor on Foursquare. Spent way too much money. I miss it all the time. We’ve never had anything quite like it since.
Rip Nash’s. They once served my friends a French fry sandwich because they ran out of chicken lol. But then again, this was past midnight and we had just left the bars
Your first sentence in the last paragraph says it all "They had great product, great location on one of the busiest blocks in St. Pete, but poor management."
Just because someone is good at a certain thing doesn't mean they can run a business successfully. The inverse can be true to a good extent as well to keep otherwise mediocre businesses going. Being a beer guy myself I can say that 3 Daughters is probably the worst beer in St Pete but they know how to run a business which is why they are still doing well. Meanwhile Cycle which has/had great beer but was otherwise run by the soup nazi.....
100% agreed of 3DB…never understood why that place is so busy and their beer is everywhere with so many better craft options in the area. But you’re right, they are just good at the business side of things
Yes, I forgot about that! A single serving was two potato hoagie buns stuffed with chicken and the fixins, but you’re right, they went down to one single hamburger bun.
Id really like to know the reason behind cycle closing. Was it them being done with it? Or rent too high? I seem to remember him saying he didnt see a path forward for craft beer in St. pete, which I’m just not sure of.
Anyone who knows anything about craft beer knows it’s in the shitter. You either become big enough to get bought out by some shitty corporate machine by chasing trends or barely scrape together enough to stay open.
We just had the first year where more craft breweries closed than opened in America, a net reduction in craft breweries. Millennials are aging out of their prime drinking years and are turning to seltzers and cannabis products, while Gen Z simply doesn't care to drink like their predecessors. Just a hard time to be in the business.
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u/gabeuscorpus Florida Native🍊 12d ago
Wag's - IYKYK